Video: Watch kids react to rotary phones

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Remember the rotary phone? You used to sit on the kitchen stool with the hand set squeezed between your ear and shoulder as you fiddled with the spiraled cord with your fingers and chatted with your best friend.

Rotary dial designs dominated phone technology throughout the 20th century. Introduced in 1949, the classic Western Electric Model 500 became the standard desk telephone for the Bell System and in the 1950s nearly every home in America had one.

Customers were thrilled when the model became available in fun colors: lemon yellow, harvest gold, chocolate brown, lime green, cherry red, rose pink, to name a few of the dozens offered.

The Model 500 was available to customers through 1984, but it waned in popularity in the 1960s with the introduction of touch-tone technology. Today, you still stumble upon the phones in antique shops and on eBay and in the homes of nostalgists and of people who appreciate the phone’s durability.

But these days, most homes have a cordless phone or maybe only a cell phone—so today’s kids have never stuck their fingers in a number hole and pulled the dial around.

The folks over at Fine Brothers Productions thought it would be fun to show some kids rotary phones and capture their reactions on film. The resulting collection of clips (above) is quite entertaining.

“A home phone?” one kid exclaims as if he’s looking at an ancient relic.

When one boy hears a dial tone he says, “It must be loading or searching or something?”

The video is a reminder of the many things from our childhoods that our own kids might never experience or know, from rotary phones and wrist watches to hand-written thank-yous and pantyhose. Check out our slide show of things your kids might never know.